


connections

by Destructive



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destructive/pseuds/Destructive
Summary: illyana and scott have neverreallyspoken, have they? not outside of the conversation being shadowed by as many x-men as scott could muster that ended up with illyana being imprisoned. its time they have a chat.mostly just a bunch of silly character examining, or something





	connections

**Author's Note:**

> takes place prior to uncanny x-men (2012) #9, while illyana is imprisoned for endangering the x-men to get her soul back  
> all mentions of katyana are past-tense but lets face it, theyre still in love
> 
> im impulse posting this at 2 am and havent proofread or edited anything and absolutely no one is allowed to shame me for that goodnight

The first time that Scott escorts her out of the cell, he brings no defense. There are no guards with him, no other mutant fighters to ensure his safety. It’s a show of trust, a sign that he knows she won’t hurt him, because what would she gain from that? An old friend, hurt, and still with no way out of the death-jacket that she’s been strapped into? He trusts her to make the right decision. Trusts her to follow the rules he’s set down for her, not because she’s good, but because she’s bad, and good at being bad.

He leads her away from her cell, through the winding hallways of Utopia, up and out of the prison, saying nothing and keeping a keen eye on the ground in front of them. They pass doors and windows, but never people. She thinks, for a moment, that he has chosen this route specifically to avoid anyone they could run across. Does he think she’s ashamed of where she has ended up? She isn’t. By the time this thought has occurred to her, her chin is already lifting higher. She is proud of what she has done, and knows what she has accomplished, even if the others don’t see it, and may never come to terms with the deaths she caused and the lives she put at risk.

Eventually, his pace slows, and they come to a stop next to a window that overlooks the cliffs surrounding the island. By now, she has lost her bearings, but Illyana imagines that Scott has picked a place far away from any prying eyes. Or maybe he simply needed time to collect his thoughts, and they are in a place where anyone can stumble into them.

He turns to her, and she imagines the creaking of his bones as he does so, slowly and meticulously. She raises a brow at him, and tries to cross her arms before remembering that she can’t, because they couldn’t make a _comfortable_ death-jacket, could they? The dark, roping wires that decorate it are just too short for her to do much outside of stand there and tug on them.

Neither make a sound for a long minute. And then his brow creases, and even though she can’t see his eyes through his visor, she can feel him looking at her. There’s something so disarming about the way he does it, as if he’s really, truly looking at her. Scott is seeing something beyond the choppy, uneven bangs and the smeared makeup that is done just enough to hide the bags under her eyes, and the light scar that comes down from her temple and is just visible at the bottom of her bangs, left over from one night when Belasco decided she was too disappointing to heal fully.

Under Scott’s gaze, she feels like a child again.

In the mansion, there was always the feeling of _knowing_ and _not knowing_ people. You could wander the halls and see the scratch on one of the doorframes where a girl with newly-awaken telekinesis had accidentally flung a pot, or a scorch mark on the ground where a boy who could turn into ice had lit a plant on fire and then, _oops_ , dropped it before he could freeze it again. There were less obvious signs too, like the settings in the danger room that only countered very specific, niche powers. Ones that only certain members of the X-Men could use, but the measures were necessary in order to challenge those special few. And in later years, the same programs would be dug up by a new generation and they would look at one another and ask themselves who could possibly need something like this? And then one adventurous member would sneak into the main office and dig up a file on someone who was no longer in the mansion, but who could fly and had the most beautiful wings, so that was why there were so many programs involving flying in tight spaces while there are lasers shooting around, to practice his wing motions.

Illyana left her own marks at the mansion. Even now, when she is branded a traitor by her own people, future generations of mutants will know that she was one of them. That she was there, that she had lived, and loved, and died for it.

There is a tree behind the mansion, far from the pool and the basketball court, where two girls held hands and laughed as they carved a heart into its bark to accompany the “K + I 4EVER” alongside it. Those girls are gone now. But in the future, another pair will wander through the woods and gaze upon a tree with letters written with context that they don’t understand, and they will know that someone was there before them, and they will feel happiness in waves, just as those two had.

There is a stone in the ground behind the mansion, only a few steps away from the tree with the letters, written in love. Next to the stone is a statue of a girl with choppy bangs, kneeling, a sword in one hand, her eyes blank and a slight smile on her face. Beside her, the stone reads “Illyana Rasputin” and when the pair who found the tree see it, they will weep, as those before them did. Through their tears, they will read the rest of the stone, finding a tale of a girl who fought demons and conquered each challenge that she faced, until her body grew tired and even the angels that she created couldn’t save her.

That will be her legacy. Life, love, and loss.

And so the generations to come will _know_ her, but _not know_ her, as she did with Scott and the X-Men that came before her (and would come after her again, late enough for her to be lost in her own right).

This is what she thinks of when she looks at him. The legacy that he left, of blast marks and keys to the motorcycle that they were never allowed to touch and the stray bits of training dummies that they still find scattered in the forest. When she looks at him now, she knows that he doesn’t live up to what he left behind. She sees him, as he sees her, for what he truly is. He is tired, worn down from the stress of being wanted dead by so many people while trying to rebuild what they used to have. He looks old, now. Older than he should. There are creases around his mouth from frowning, but she knows him well enough to know that there are even more around his eyes from smiling.

And when he looks at her, what does he see? He doesn’t see a demon who has just killed the Elder Gods. No, he is too kind to ever look at her that way, unless he needs something dangerous done and knows that only she will do it. He doesn’t see the tree behind the mansion. He only sees the stone, and the statue next to it. He only hears the words that Storm said that day as they buried her. She spoke of a girl who was haunted by demons, but who remained an angel all the same. He sees Illyana as a teenager who had everything stolen from her in the dead of night when he was gone and couldn’t help. Maybe he blames himself for how much she has suffered.

There is a feeling of connection here, between the two of them. Not one of love or passion or even friendship, but a connection all the same. They are both so old now, tired beyond their years, and the have witnessed too much to ever be young again. It’s something outside of being X-Men that connects them. Something with being firsts. Being the first directly under Xavier’s wing, being the first that was able to lock Xavier out.

The silence is broken like that, with Illyana thinking of how connected they are, so different and yet so similar, and Scott staring at her with something that must be pity.

“Where did we go wrong?”

He says it so softly that she thinks maybe she didn’t hear it at all.

But she must have heard it right, because something in his face changes, and tears begin to pour from underneath his visor. He’s crying now, and she’s looking away as if this was something she wasn’t meant to see.

Maybe he doesn’t want her to respond. But then again, she was never very good at doing what people wanted. “We didn’t go wrong. There just wasn’t a right way to go, so we told everyone to go fuck themselves and made our own path.”

He laughs at that, a low chuckle that tugs at his frown lines and turns them into something better. She keeps her gaze averted, maybe out of respect, or maybe because she doesn’t know how to handle someone who is crying.

“Kitty mourned you.”

That’s what brings Illyana to look at Scott again, who might still be crying, but has started to wipe away the tears.

“Peter did, too, but not like Kitty. She changed after you died,” he continues, turning back to the window that looks out to the ocean. “Have you talked to her since..?”

He trails off, too scared to directly talk about what has happened since her resurrection. Scared? No. Too smart to say it directly. Scott Summers is many things, but scared is not one of them. She has seen Kitty Pryde only once since her return, and seeing as how it was in the same instance as Illyana turning her own brother into a demon pawn, the two didn’t have much time to talk. She shakes her head, and he must see it out of the corner of his eye, because he keeps talking.

“You know that I can’t let you out, Illyana. Not yet. Not for Kitty, not for Peter, and not for you. You’ve done too much damage around here, and I can’t fix it all in one sitting. But I’m trying. I am.”

Maybe the connection between the two of them is respect. She feels that now, as she lets him talk about how he’s doing everything that he can to release her, despite some of his own misgivings. He goes on about it for some time, about the politics that come with running Utopia and trying to keep them all from being attacked.

She smiles as he talks, one of the first genuine smiles from her in a long time, and then she turns away from him and begins walking back the way that they came. She knows- hopes, really- that he’s giving her a weird look as he jogs to catch up with her.

“Hide your halo, Scott Summers. There is too much work to be done for you to be so kind to one of your prisoners.”

They must look like an odd pair, the girl in the death-jacket with a soft smile, and the man that carries himself like a leader but stutters like a follower.


End file.
